


Sasha Week 2021

by Eatgreass



Series: Rusty Quill Gaming Events [1]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Body Dysmorphia, Found Family, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, except its just sasha lives, i really don't know how to tag for that lol, sasha is badass, sasha is happy in ancient rome, sasha week 2021, sashaweek2021, so much found family, sorry grizzop, will update tags as I go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28812936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass
Summary: First prompt for Sasha week- DangerThis is gonna be my first time doing a writing challenge thing, so I' m super excited.
Relationships: Amidus & Azus & Bertus & Grizz "Riz" & Maximus & Sagax & Sasha Racket & Wilde (Roman Rogues), Azu & Sasha Racket, Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam & Sasha Racket, Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Sasha Racket, Sasha Racket & Celiquillithon "Cel" Sidebottom, Sasha Racket & Zolf Smith
Series: Rusty Quill Gaming Events [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2152122
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	1. Danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First prompt for Sasha week- Danger  
> This is gonna be my first time doing a writing challenge thing, so I' m super excited.

Sasha was the best of the best. There wasn’t a trap she couldn’t disable, not a knife she couldn’t use like an expert after one minute of getting her hands on it. There wasn’t a person she couldn’t pickpocket, and not a place she couldn’t con her way into. 

She repeated her mantra, over and over, as she sat on the dingy ceiling, looking down at the bustling streets of Other London. There was nothing she couldn’t do. 

She flipped down, expertly somersaulting herself into a light footed landing in the shadows.

She was the best of the best. 

She remembered Brock's face as she stole her way through the streets, she remembered Barrett's fury the last time she’d failed a mission, she remembered the threat she’d been given, tears in her eyes and her cheek stinging with pain and humiliation. 

There was no room for error. 

Except there was, wasn’t there? 

It was a fluke, it had to be a fluke. Sasha Racket didn’t make mistakes. Sasha Racket wasn’t supposed to stumble halfway up a building, letting go of the ledge, letting herself go flailing down below. 

Ouch. 

It hurt like a bitch. 

She saw stars. 

She saw- no, no, no that wasn’t it. Barrett was standing there, standing over her, sneering down at her. She could almost hear his next words: “I knew you couldn’t do it.”

She stumbled to her feet, holding a knife in front of her. The man she had thought was Barret stumbled back, holding his hands up. “Woah, woah.” Just a bystander. 

“Sorry,” Sasha mumbled, sheathing her knife. She didn’t like this. Too many eyes were on her. How was she supposed to get away? Why were they still looking at her like that? 

She dashed away, running until she couldn’t catch her breath anymore. 

She had  _ failed.  _ Sasha Racket, the best thief in all of Other London, had  _ failed.  _

Sasha froze with fear. She couldn't go back, could she? Not back to Barrett, not back to whatever punishment he had in store for her, not back to any of that. With a start, she realized that truly, death would be a better alternative. 

She stood shakily, and prepared to re-enter the building. 

It was easy, really, and Sasha felt all the more silly for her previous inability to enter.

In, grab the box, disable the trap, and out again. 

And then bring it back to Barrett, see the smirk on his face as he opened it, told her it was “Adequate, I suppose,” and send her back to her room until he needed another thief. 

She slid through the window, and the box she was looking for was immediately apparent. But that wasn’t the only valuable in the room. Sasha’s eyes grew wide as she saw the gold pieces on the desk, the lavish dress draped over the chair, the exquisite elvish sword hanging off the mantle. 

“Excuse me,” came a voice, and Sasha turned around, ducking behind the sofa with knife in hand. 

“You can come out” came the voice, “I’m not here to hurt you. However I would point out that you’re in  _ my  _ house right now.”

“Who are you?” asked Sasha, her eyes scanning for exits. 

“I could ask you the same question,” said the voice. “Barrett did say you were a slippery one. However, it seems I was right when I told him none of his little minions could get past me.”

“Not a minion.”

“Really? It seems as if you’re following his orders to the letter.”

“Shut up,” said Sasha, as the woman began to stride towards her. 

Sasha’s last image was a tall elvish woman in royal red robes standing over her, lips pursed in a clinical smile. Then, the woman snapped, and she was asleep.

\---

Sasha awoke, hog tied and in a very scratchy burlap bag. “Lemme out!”

“No,” came the voice. “And don’t try and get out any knives. I searched you before putting you in here.” 

“Fuck off,” said Sasha, checking for her hidden knives. Her coat had been stripped from her, and so had any of the knives she had around her belt. She grunted and reached around for her shoes. They were gone too. Damn. Maybe the woman was right, all her gear ws gone, and she was tied. In a bag. 

Just as she began to undo the knots on her legs, she was unceremoniously dropped on the floor. 

“There she is,” said the woman.

“I never doubted you, Eldarion,” said Barrett’s voice, and Sasha froze. 

“Well?” asked Barrett. “Get her out.”

She saw the knots being loosened, and Eldarion dumped her out of the bag. “Some spy you have.”

Barrett hummed. “I’m afraid she’s not all she could be. Would you care to teach her to behave?”

“No,” said Sasha.

Barrett looked at her. “No?” What do you mean, Sasha? 

“I can do it better, I’ll study more, I can do it, I promise.”

“What,” said Barrett, waving a hand idly, “Steal better? There are other skills to learn.”

Sasha stared, her eyes wide.

Now,” said Barrett, “I’d appreciate it if you went with her willingly. Otherwise, she’s very capable of  _ making  _ you come with her.”

Eldarion smiled, satisfied, and cut the bonds on Sasha’s legs cleanly, and tucked the knife back in her pocket. 

“That’s my knife,” thought Sasha as she followed Eldarion out of Barrett’s mansion.


	2. Everyone lives AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 2- Aus. I didn't know if everyone lives counts as an au but listen I want sasha to meet cel.

Sasha was going to have to live with letting go of Grizzop for the rest of her life, and that was fair. 

The first time she’d had friends, had real friends, and they left, or they died, or, or, they didn’t care. She let them down. 

Thought after thought slipped through her head as Grizzop’s hand slipped out of hers. This was the wrong way for him to go, drowning in the infinite space of nothingness, and Eldarion- she hadn’t saved him, either. 

Sasha fell to the floor of the roman temple in tears. 

“Hello? Um- Hello?” She looked up. It was Einstein. “Ah! It’s been so long! I was worried you were dead but look-” He held up a bag of knives- “You aren’t! So I brought you a present.”

Sasha gratefully looked through the bag. It was knives. It was, to be specific, a bag full of finely sharpened and polished knives. “Er… thanks.”

Einstein grinned, looking very pleased with himself, and threw his arms around her in a hug. For once, she didn’t resist. 

Einstein looked around, frowning. “Where is Grizzop? And Eldarion?” 

“Grizzop…” said Sasha. 

“He didn’t make it,” finished Hamid. “Neither did Eldarion. She… she sacrificed herself for us.”

“It was my fault,” said Sasha. “Grizzop, I mean. I didn’t hold on tight enough, and he slipped.”

“Oh, Sasha…” Hamid looked sadly up at her, and ran to hug her. It barely reached her upper thighs, but it was a nice gesture. At least… at least Hamid hadn’t changed.

“Eldarion's dead?” asked Sasha. 

“Yes,” said Hamid. “Yes, I think so. I mean, if she isn’t, she’s most definitely stuck in between planes and-”

“Good.” Sasha scowled. “That bitch can go to hell.”

“I thought she was nice,” said Einstein. “Very interesting woman.”

Sasha gripped her knife tighter. “Interesting in a ‘I’ll threaten your friends and family with death if you don’t listen to me’ kind of way.”

“Yes,” said Einstein. “Yes, she did that. Come on! There is so much to see. Look, I have gifts for all of you!” He gestured to the bags sitting beside him, and Sasha cautiously looked inside of hers. There was a mobile stone, three days of food, desert gear, and six more knives. She picked it up with a smile, even through her grief. Maybe people really did care about her. 

The next few days were a blur of meeting people, of extremely uncomfortable confirmations that she was really her, of learning that everything was broken, because she was just a girl that didn’t know how to fix anything. 

Then, she was trapped. 

She was always trapped. No matter how much she tried to convince herself that everything was okay, that people did care about her, it always came back to bite her. 

This time, it came back to bite her in a jail cell, Zolf watching from the bars, telling her he’d let her out if she only waited. She didn’t believe him. What reason did she have to trust him anymore?

He told her it was for the sake of the world, he said that bad things had happened, but friends didn’t lock up friends. Hamid tried to comfort her, but a flick of her knife, and he was in the corner furthest from her. Azu looked disappointed, and Sasha nearly cried. 

But Hamid was working with Zolf, and Zolf was- Zolf was- Zolf used to be a friend. 

On the seventh day, Zolf unlocked the doors. As soon as she was allowed out, she bolted through the corridor and up the stairs, determined not to be seen. 

“Is she okay?” Sasha heard Wilde ask.

“She feels…” Zolf was never good with words. “She feels betrayed.”

“She has to know it was for the good of everyone.”

“She does,” said Zolf. “But she’s been locked away far too much. Give her space. You can introduce the mission tomorrow. A lot of people need space away from their… captors after quarantine.”

“It’s necessary.”

“I  _ know.  _ Dammit, I know, but does she?” Zolf sighed. “Look… give her space, Wilde.”

“I always do.”

“Don’t I know it,” grumbled Zolf, and their voices faded out as they walked further from her. 

Sasha could cry with relief, if she wasn’t still in the throes of panic. Maybe Zolf wasn’t trying to hurt her, maybe he was what he said… Zolf had never been good with bluffing, anyway. 

She’d keep eyes open, anyhow. 

\---

And the next day, she was off again, Zolf and Hamid and Azu in tow. 

“You could have told me, Zolf,” she said. 

“Couldn’t have. If I had, and you’d ended up being blue-veined, what happened then?”

Sasha was silent.

“Look,” said Zolf. “I wasn’t trying to betray trust, okay. It’s been- it’s been eighteen months of hell.”

Sasha nodded. “Are you going to do that to me again?”

“We’ll all have to go back into quarantine after this, yeah,” said Zolf. “I hope you’ll come willingly though.”

Before the two had a chance to talk any more, they were staring at a town covered in bodies, with one very tall figure standing over the fallen.

“Flank them,” whispered Zolf, and Sasha didn’t have to be told twice. 

“Oi!”” called Zolf. “Who are you?”

“Konichiwa? Nihao? Oh- Hello? Hi? Why’re you here?”

“Yes, Hello-” said Zolf.

“Why have you been assaulting all these people?” asked Hamid.

“What are you doing here?” asked the person. 

“We’re here to-” Sasha was at the person's throat with a knife. 

“Sasha?” Called Zolf. “What-  _ why,  _ Sasha?”

“They have a bomb on ‘em.”

“I do!” The person seemed very pleased about this. “Can you maybe-” They gestured at the knife. “Look, I won’t throw a bomb at you. Pinkie promise? It;s not very nice, you know, coming into my town and sticking a knife at my throat-”

“Let them go, Sasha,” said Zolf wearily.

Sasha sulked but let go, skulking behind the person.

“Who are you?”

“Cel Sidebottom! Pronouns they/them, currently in the business of protecting this village! Why are you attacking me?”

“We’re- We’re not.”

“Really? You look very-” Cel gestured to the chaos in their wake- “Attack-ey.”

“We thought you were,” said Zolf. “Attacking them.”

“I mean,” said Cel, “I was, but that was only because they started it. I mean, they keep coming to attack me and the residents, and I think I’m the only one that can-” 

“Right,” said Zolf. “We were told you could help us?”

“I mean, it depends what you need help with. I could probably help you build something, or fix some sort of mechanical project, but if you need my help with I don’t know, starting a book club, I’ll be a little bit out of my depth so-”

“Shoin,” said Zolf. “We want to go to his institute and explore it. Find out what’s up with the weather.”

“Oh well, in that case, I would be very glad to help you! Should we-”

“Just- wait,” said Zolf. “We have to stay with you for a week. To make sure you're… you.”

“Well, that is a very roundabout way to invite yourself into my house, Mr….”

“Zolf Smith.”

“Mr. Smith, but I am very willing to have some house guests. Oh! Jasper might be excited. Jasper doesn’t get many people to talk to other than me, and I’m aware I can be quite a handful,-”

“How do you make your bombs?”

Cel looked at Sasha, raising their goggles slightly and wiping the rain off of them. “Well,” they said, “It’s a very complicated process, and of course I’ll be able to show you much better when we get out of the rain, but-” 

Cel continued to prattle until the group reached the house. 

“... and you’re Sasha, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you make  _ your  _ bombs?”

“Ah,” said Sasha. “I don’t, um, well,” 

‘It’s more of a feeling, right?”

“Yeah,” said Sasha, glad that Cel could understand. 

“Do you wanna see how  _ big  _ of an explosion we can make?”

Sasha happily followed Cel out of their house, more excited than she’d been in weeks. 

\---

Dinnertime was just as chaotic as everything else about Cel. Sasha scrambled around, desperately trying to get out of the way as Hamid and Zolf bickered about the proper way to set a table, Azu brought chairs in to fit the entire crew, and Cel and a gnome who she now knew as Jasper prepared food and stopped several grease fires. 

“Bon appétit," said Cel 

Azus’s chair cracked. 

“Oh- Oh, I’m sorry, I probably have more stable chairs but the structural integrity of most of my furniture has diminished, so that happens to me sometimes too,- Jasper, where did you pull these chairs from?”

“It is okay,” said Azu. “This house is much more fitting for me than any of the others I have been to.”

“Here,” said Cel, pushing their chair over to Azu. “Switch with me, I know this one is used often. Oh- have you guys met Jasper?”

The gnome waved. 

“This is Jasper, my apprentice!” said Cel. 

Hamid waved back. 

Sasha attempted to wave, but really just ended up flailing her fork around, a piece of shrimp hitting the ceiling. 

“Sorry, sorry,” said Sasha, and threw a knife to the ceiling, dislodging the shrimp.

“Impressive,” said Cel, eyes wide. “I like you.” 

Sasha ducked her head, flustered by the praise. Perhaps people were good after all. 

Or maybe it was an alchemist thing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on tumblr as @roll-a-reflex-save if you wanna come yell with me about rqg


	3. Gargoyles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AKA some more angst but sasha gets a lil bit of comfort

Sasha had friends. Right? Hamid was her friend. Azu was her friend, but Azu was friends with everyone. Grizzop was her friend, but only partly, in that weird way where two hunters meet and decide the best way to hunt is together. Still, she thinks, she would miss him, so that makes them friends. Bertie she had never been friends with. Deep down, she knew that he wasn’t capable of having friends. Even Hamid, Bertie’s closest friend, hadn’t really been someone Bertie cared about. Bertie wasn’t capable of caring. And Zolf… She had thought of Zolf as a friend, up until he left in Prague. That’s when she started to wonder. 

No. people were allowed to leave, that’s what they did. Brock had left and he’d never stopped being her friend. Still, she thought in the back of her mind, maybe if she’d been a bit better, Zolf would still be here. 

And she was dying, and she only had three friends. 

The rest were gone or dead or- she squeezed her eyes shut in a futile attempt to stop the thoughts from coming. 

“Sasha?” A small hand rested on her back, a strange but reassuring anchor. 

“Ay ‘Amid.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yup.” She stretched, rubbing her eye. “Everything’s just fine, well good, you know, except for me dying in a month.”

“Oh…  _ Sasha.” _

“Nope! It’s fine.” She stretched herself out on the halfling sized couch. “I had a good run. Saved the world, ya know. All the typical things to do before you turn thirty. Which I will never get to.”

“Sasha- We’ll get the heart, we can-”

“I know, Hamid.” She absently picked up a knife and threw it, embedding it up to the hilt in the  _ very  _ fancy ceiling. 

Hamid nearly turned white with fear, but decided Sasha was a more pressing issue than the damage. “Sasha? Is there anything else you want to talk about?”

“Nothing as bad as my sister dying.”

Hamid froze. Shit, thought Sasha. That was a bad thing to say. 

“No,” said Hamid, his voice carefully measured. “But you can still have problems.”

“Like dying in a month?”

“Yes. Like that.” 

Sasha was silent until Hamid turned back to his book. Then, she snuck to the roof of his mansion. 

“Ay.”

“Hello,” growled the gargoyle. She liked these ones in Hamid's house. She didn’t know how, but they knew french. 

Sasha looked down over the city of Cairo. “What’s happening?”

The gargoyle laughed, a gruff, throaty sound. “The sandstorms have been too thick to see much.”

Sasha nodded. “Mind if I sit here for a bit?”

The gargoyle nodded as much as it could, and made a gesture to allow her to sit. 

Soon, she would have to make her way back to the real world, where Barrett stalked her, and she was a dead girl walking, but now, she could sit in peace and stony silence.


	4. Greener Grass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha has a nice life in ancient rome.

It had taken Sasha so long to be comfortable in her new place. 

Never too comfortable, mind you. She was still  _ Sasha,  _ Ava Huskangus, still the rouge with the same talents as before. She was never going to get too comfortable. 

Still, it wasn’t too bad to have a place to call her own. 

And to have kids like her, but better in every way. 

Most of them were too young to remember their name when Sasha found them. Hell, most of them were too young to even talk when she found them. She remembered those moments all too well, the blood, the ash, the fire and the death. 

No child should have to see a body that early, no child should know death so intimately. Of course, Sasha thought wryly, that hadn’t stopped Barrett from teaching her to kill a man at the ripe old age of seven. 

She was going to make sure these kids, even through the ash and smoke and tears, led a better life then she had. 

And that was how she had ended up, twenty years later with aching joints, practically running her own orphanage. Cicero assured her that she was the best person these children had known, that they loved her like a mother, but still she awoke some nights, gasping and shaking in fear that she was no better than the parent’s she’d known. 

She’d written letter after letter to her first friends, hoping they would find at least one in their time. She’d written some to Brock, in the hope that maybe he could find them before he died. 

It didn’t tell him anything about what was happening. She couldn’t change anything, and deep down she knew that, so she told him how much she loved him, how much she would miss him, and hope that one day, someone would let him know before he died. 

Sasha choked back a sob. She had to be strong in front of the children. They’d seen enough death that the ones that afflicted her were merely a blip on the radar. 

Almost as if on cue, little Wilde threw herself into Sasha’s room, chattering excitedly about something or other. Sasha smiled, biting down the pain that always came back so unexpectedly, and hugged her daughter. 

Her daughter. When had Sasha begun thinking of them as a family? 

It didn't matter  _ when.  _ If she thought of them as a family, she was already miles ahead of any kind of relationship Barrett had harbored with his wards, using them only as a way to gain what he wanted. 

Family was more than blood, Sasha knew that all too well, so she finally allowed herself to consider the question she’d had in her head for so long. Was Hamid her family? Was Zolf? Azu? Grizzop? Even Bertie, in the weirdest way possible?

Okay, not Bertie. They had tolerated him because he had hit things well, but Sasha had hated the scumbag waste of space. 

But the rest of them? She had cared about them more than she had cared about anybody in a long time, and she knew that they felt the same way about her, so that was family. 

Hamid was good with that. Laying things out in clear terms, even if she didn’t agree with them, he laid it out eloquently enough that even hearing him speak was reassuring. Unless he was freaking out, in which case nobody really knew what to do. He had gotten better at that, though. Hardly ever vomited during combat. 

Zolf was harder to get along with, but even at the worst of times, at least she knew he cared. That was more than she could say for really… most of the people she had worked with in her lifetime.

Azu loved. What else was there to say about her? Even though Sasha knew that Azu cared about everyone, it was still never doubting that she loved  _ Sasha,  _ and Sasha specifically, just because Sasha was Sasha, and that was it. Azu thought she was worthy of love because she existed, and that nearly brought tears to Sasha’s eyes.

And Grizzop. He was fiercely loyal, more than any others she had met, and she loved him for that. Even in the end, he had died and she had wept, and she knew that they were family, because he had given his life for her and she could never,  _ never  _ give it back. 

Even Wilde, in a weird way. After all, she’d cared enough to name a child after him, and names were important. So she had a family then, and she had a family here, and she wouldn’t go back or give up any of those things, regardless of the pain she felt in getting there. 

“This is good,” she thought, and smiled. 


	5. Experiences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times Sasha stood up to Barrett.

_ 1 _

The first time Sasha stood up to Barrett, she was four years old. Just after her mother died, Barrett had taken her to a room, and sat her in it in silence for three days. On the fourth day he came out to greet her, holding the fanciest eel pie she’d ever seen, wearing a smug smile. 

She’d kicked him and thrown the pie to the side. 

He had made her eat it off the floor if she wanted to eat at all that day. 

That was the day that she learned Barrett had two sides to him. One was utterly charming, the kind of parent Sasha always wished she had. He was proud of her for her skills, he was absolutely willing to let her have an extra piece of cake after dinner, he would dote on her like she was his only daughter.

Then there was the Barrett that locked her in a room, the Barrett that got angry, the Barret that took her knife and slapped her across the face with it, ordering nobody to heal her so that she could remember what happened to her if she crossed him. 

Both of his sides had an undercurrent of cruelty. 

In a way, she almost hated him when he was trying to be nice, because she had seen that he wasn’t, and she still wanted to trust that  _ maybe  _ he could love her,  _ maybe  _ she could get an ounce of pride that wasn’t manipulative. 

But every time she thought he was getting better, that he was changing, she remembered her first night in that room, the only living thing she’d seen giving her the food that reminded her of her mother, and telling her to eat it off the floor. 

She ate it, in the end. He’d stood and watched, waiting for her to pick it up, and she had stared back, pretending her stomach wasn’t rebelling. 

And then she’d eaten the pie, because she was never going to win this kind of game with him. 

_ 2 _

Sasha was fifteen years old, and she was  _ angry.  _ That wouldn’t have been news to anybody who raised a fifteen year old, but Sasha was a dangerous fifteen year old, and one with more skill than half the city of Other London. She knew the streets like the back of her hand, and after weeks of knife throwing, she knew the back of her hand pretty damn well. 

Barrett could, in her opinion, fuck off, and she was going to see what it took for him to kill her. 

She stalked into his office and plunged a dagger into the soft wood, hitting right between her fingers. 

“That,” she said, “Is for being a dick.” 

He looked up, confused but unsurprised. “Sasha.”

“Yeah,” she said, and plunged another dagger into the wood, embedding it up to the hilt, only centimetres away from his ring finger. 

“ _ Sasha.” _

“What, Barrett?” She pulled both knives out of the wood with expert ease and flipped them wide and high, enjoying the way his eyes lingered as they returned to her hands. 

“Not appropriate,” he said, clipped tone and anger-filled vowels. 

“Really? I woulda thought killing innocent people was inappropriate, too.”

“Oh,  _ Sasha.  _ Now is  _ not  _ the time to suddenly develop a moral compass.”

“Didn't,” she said, staring straight at him. “Where did you put Brock?”

He actually  _ laughed  _ at that. A full, deep laugh, drawing his shortsword in her stunned moments of panic. Whatever. She knew she was a better fighter than he could ever be. 

“Where?” she asked again. 

“I didn’t do anything with him,” said Barrett. Flightly boy, he was. Must have run off. Besides-” he grinned- “Am I your brother’s keeper?”

“Fuck you,” she spit, and turned sharply on her heel. 

_ 3 _

She’d spit in Barrett’s face this time, and that had been the last straw. A lady didn’t do that, after all. She neglected to mention she was the furthest thing from a lady one had ever seen, and he made sure of that. 

Barrett didn’t like to hear that he had failed, in any capacity, so she was sent away. In retrospect, it was the worst and the best time of her life, happening at exactly the same time. 

She hadn’t seen him in weeks, all her hatred of him replaced with hatred of Eldarion. 

Until one day, Eldarion shoved Sasha in front of his desk. It was times like this Sasha hated being short. Sure, it was useful in fights, having a low center of gravity, but there was nothing she hated more than looking up at Barrett and Eldarion. 

“How is she doing?” asked Barrett. 

“Adequate,” said Eldarion. “She has potential, but she refuses to use it.”

Sasha put a hand on her dagger. Eldarion slapped it away. 

“And,” said Eldarion, addressing Barrett, “I have no idea where she gets all these bloody  _ knives.” _

Barrett actually cracked a smile at that, and Sasha, loath to admit it, cared that he was proud of her. 

“She’ll do that,” he said. “Make sure she doesn’t use them, she’s quick on her feet, and even quicker with the knives.”

“That’s what bothers me,” said Eldarion. “She needs to put more effort into the actual  _ lessons.” _

“Sasha,” said Barrett. Sasha glared. “Listen to Eldarion. She has a lot to teach you.”

Eldarion smirked. “She’s a sharp lady, and not just with knives. She needs to apply herself, that’s all.”

_ 4 _

Running, running, running, because she’d  _ escaped,  _ she’d gotten out of Barrett’s clutches, and damn it, she wasn’t going back. 

Except for… The ring. Sasha began to breath faster, and faster, until she was near certain she would pass out in one of the back alleyways. 

He could see her with the ring, and if he could see her, he would never let her go. 

She stood for a moment before making her choice. If she couldn’t take off the ring, she would take off her finger. 

Sasha knew her daggers were sharp enough to slice skin apart like butter, but it’s something different when it’s your own skin. One, two, three, and her body was screaming in pain even as she bit her tongue and closed her mouth firmly. 

It was gone. The finger, somehow forgetting that it wasn’t her anymore, not really, writhed on the ground in front of her. She pushed down the nausea and looked at the space where her finger had been. 

It was going to take a lot of practice to get as good at throwing knives with her left hand as well as her right. Still, she thought, a small price to pay for freedom from both Barrett and Eldarion. 

Sasha wandered the streets then. Too filled with adrenaline to rest, and too bone-tired to do anything but walk. She let her thoughts envelop her then. Thinking of Brock, of her mother, of everybody that she’d had back in Other London that was gone now, lost to the stinking streets. 

“Ay!” She heard a voice, and turned her head to the side, too tired even to bolt. “That’s the fourth time you’ve passed my shop!” 

She was getting rusty. Staying in the same places for too long. She should run, now, get out of the way, make sure he never saw her again. “What’s it to you?” she called instead.

“It’s cold outside,” said the man. “You’re going to freeze if you keep ambling around like that.”

“So?”

“So come in! Warm up a little, I can give you a little food, you look positively emaciated.”

Sasha tightened her grip around a dagger. “No.”

The man shrugged, managing to look almost concerned. “Alright, then. But don’t stay out much longer. Bad people come out at night.”

Yeah, thought Sasha, people like me. But she said nothing. 

The next time she passed the shop of the strange man, there was a plate of food waiting by the door. She paused, and looked at the food. Then back around her. It had to be a trap. Right? It was always a trap. She looked back at the food, and sprinted as quickly as she could, grabbing the food and isolating herself in an alleyway by the side of the street, never once letting go of her knife. 

The food wasn’t poisoned. Nor did it have a microchip in it, or magic, or any other kind of foulness Barrett would think of. 

On the third night of picking up food from the house, she stopped to talk to the owner. “Why?” she asked. 

“Why what?”

“Why the… the food? It’s not drugged, not poisoned, not traceable, at least that I’ve found, and you haven’t come after me. Why?”

He looked at her sadly. “What a life you must have lived to be that wary of the kindness of a stranger,” he said. 

Sasha didn’t know what to say to that, and he moved to go inside the house. “‘Wait,” said Sasha. “What’s your name?”

“Bi Ming,” he said, smiling at her. “Bi Ming Gusset, or Gusset, if you prefer. And you’re always welcome to keep out of the cold in my house. Even though it's small, I’m fairly certain that it’s more than the alleyways out back.”

Sasha was already gone by the time he finished his sentence. 

From her place on the top of the roof, she saw him sigh, and retreat back into his shop, flipping the sign to closed. 

The fourth day, she came back again. “Helping me puts a target on your back,” she said. 

He looked at her. “And?”

“I’m from other London. I stick out like a sore thumb. Why would you give me anything?”

He smiled at her. “Would you like to come in? This seems like a discussion not fit for the outside of my shop in the dead of winter.”

She followed him inside. 

\---

“I was also from other London,” said Gusset as he busied himself making tea. “It took a long time to dig my way out, believe me, and now I run this shop. I’m always happy to help another kid from down below.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So you’re helping me get out because… because you can.”

He smiled at her. “Bingo. It’s hard to understand, isn’t it, when you’ve never had enough in life to share? But I’m here now, and I have enough resources to help people along my way, and so that’s what I’m going to do.”

Sasha sipped her tea. “I… yeah.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” said Gusset. “For as long as I can.”

“Thank you,” said Sasha, overcome by the kindness of a stranger. 

_ 5 _

Sasha stepped up to Barrett, a bound, gagged, mess of a man. “You’re just a man,” she said, fighting to stop her voice from shaking, and turned away. 


	6. Rome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aka I cause more pain for my favorite characters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> graphic depictions of violence for today's prompt.

The streets were red with blood. That is a line repeated oft in books, the exaggeration of a massacre, but no. It was like the very walls were bleeding in Rome. Every step Sasha took threw her off balance, because every step was thick and sticky under her feet, and the child she had grabbed from the arms of a dead mother was wailing, drenched in the same red-brown that the streets were. 

She didn’t have time to stop. She didn’t have time to think. All Sasha could do was run, run, run, hoping desperately that the dragon didn’t see her. Cicero was slower. But he could easily keep pace when she had a child strung across her. Sasha needed safety, she needed to get out of Rome, there was too much  _ blood,  _ too much death, more than she’d ever seen in a lifetime of war. 

The streets were red with blood, and it all mixed together after a while. The Hades temple was just as much of a massacre as the others, and healers were running from place to place, healing where they could, doing all they could. 

What could she do? What could she do as a person that knew nothing about Rome? She was so  _ small.  _ She’d never realized it, but she was so small, compared to Apophis and Guive, and everybody else, and there was precious little she could do for anyone. 

The streets were red with blood, and all of it was her fault. She should have been watching, been waiting, doing what she was best at. Instead she froze, and watched a best friend die in front of her and for her. She was just a scared little girl, sodden with blood and holding a child that wasn’t hers. It had caked onto her skin, leaving her looking like the walking corpse she knew that she was. Sasha tasted rust, tasted nail heads, tasted the bitter pill she’d worked so hard not to swallow, and she despaired. 

The streets were red with blood, and it was terrible. Echos of the friends she had lost, because she already knew that she was dead to them, in their time when the world was old and ruled by dragons for millennia. 

The streets were red, and they stank like rotting flesh, enough that Sasha held her breath and gagged, not caring where her sick went. Her eyelids were cracked and sealed, and the blood had coagulated around her, making it impossible for her to display any expression but steely-faced intelligence. 

The streets were red and bloody, and so was she. 

The streets were red, and death was all around. 

The streets were bloody, there was blood, there was death, the death was  _ her.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me @roll-a-reflex-save on tumblr.


	7. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha gets some tattoo and scarification, following Prague.

Sasha hated the way Barret was etched into her. She hated the way that Bertie was etched into her. She hated that everything bad that had ever happened to her was etched into her, from that damn falcon sitting on her back, taunting anyone who came close, to the loss of her ring finger, a brutal reminder of what she wasn’t. Her body was a tapestry, a temple to those she hated. 

Her body should have been her own, it should have been a monument to herself, but instead the etchings she saw were marks of pain and despair. 

Was this how Zolf felt, when he looked at where his legs would have been?

Did he see himself as  _ himself,  _ were his markings more than just a sum of mistakes? 

Sasha hated the way that other people drilled themselves into her without consent, without permission, the way that they  _ could,  _ if she slipped up just once. 

So she decided to fix it one day. One day in Cairo, because she was dying in a month, and damn it if she was going out of the world with Barrett’s vines still twisted around her, with Bertie still leaving a flowering scar on her back, a reminder that he never cared. 

“Can you fix this?” she asked, slipping her jacket off in the temple. 

The cleric looked at her for a moment. “That’s very strange,” they said. “When did you get this?” They lightly stroked a hand down her spine, and Sasha resisted the urge to shudder. 

“Two weeks ago,” she said. “Maybe more. I haven’t kept track.”

“And what do you want from it?”

Sasha scowled. “I don’t want a falcon on my back, I know that.”

“Hmm.” The cleric thought for a moment. “I can’t fix the scarring,” they said, “but I could easily add lines and make it look like a swallow.”

“A swallow,” said Sasha. “What would that mean?”

“Happiness,” said the cleric. “Luck, good fortune.”

Sasha snorted. “All things I could use. Right, what about this one?” and she pointed to the burn on her side, inching its way up her face.”

The cleric looked for a minute, and Sasha resisted the urge to blush and slink back into the shadows. She wasn’t used to being seen like this. “It will always look distinctly like a burn,” said the cleric. “I’m afraid that can’t be helped.”

“Right,” said Sasha. ‘What can you do?” and she considered a moment. “And what’s your name?”

“Ava,” said the cleric, still examining Sasha’s burn. “I could put a flower pattern over the scars.” Ava looked up seriously. “But it would hurt, you know. Tattoos set over burnt skin.”

“I don’t care,” said Sasha. “I want roses,” she said, thinking of Azu’s gentle smile. “Roses all down the side of the burn.”

Ava smiled. “It will hurt a lot, this much tattooing done in what-?”

“As quickly as you can,” said Sasha. “”I can take the pain.”

“I don’t doubt that,” said Ava, running her fingers over a knife scar at the base of Sasha’s throat. “This one?”

Sasha remembered where that had come from. Barrett, holding a knife to her throat, promising she’d remember him. “An arrow,” she said. “An arrow going across my neck.”

She and Ava continued that way, marking her scars and deciding what tattoo each scar would carry. A storm-tossed ship, covering the withered skin on her hip from where she’d been pushed away one too many times. A slice across her stomach from when she was a child stealing food off the streets, turning into a thin stream of fire out of the mouth of a dragon. (Nothing for Bertie. He had already etched himself into her one too many times, and she was more than happy to leave him be, dead in Prague.) Ava traced lines over her arms and legs, where abuse from the years had given her more scars than any twenty-three year old had any right to keep on their body, and suggested different markings to cover each scar. Sasha began to relax, explain where each scar came from while Ava looked at her with interest, rather than pity. 

For the final piece, a grand work of art down her autopsy scar, covering the ugly purple skin that Mr. Ceiling said he had “fixed.” Down her sternum showed the events of the best years of her life, from the airship to the catacombs, the temple to the secret pyramid under the bank vault, all arrayed as a story, so that Mr. Ceiling couldn’t take away the artwork that her friends had created on her. They had marked her more than any of the people trying to kill her, anyway. 

Ava was patient, spending hours on each work as she idly chatted with Sasha, and Sasha in turn told Ava the story of each scar being covered. It was the closest Sasha had gotten to being vulnerable, she would admit, facedown on a table while Ava drilled needles into her skin. A soothing kind of pain, knowing that it was her friends now, and not her enemies, that had entered themselves in her body. 

And when Sasha ended in Rome, it didn’t feel right to use Sasha as her name anymore, but neither could she take the name of any of the people she had thought of as family. Those names were not hers to defile. So she remembered that day in Cairo, and touched the arrow darting across her throat. Ava, she thought, would be a good name to take. Respect for the first person that made her body feel like more than a tool. 


End file.
